AI Device Helps Babies with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy refers to a number of neurological disorders that can occur during pregnancy or early childhood. Children with cerebral palsy can suffer from severe motor skill loss and experience intellectual challenges. Cerebral palsy doesn’t usually become fully apparent until after the age of one, which cuts out a huge chunk of time that could be used towards early intervention. Giving support to the youngster’s motor skills as early as possible can help at-risk children to develop their movement and cognitive abilities.

Mobility Challenges

Cerebral palsy almost always affects a child’s mobility and range of motion. Mobility is defined as the extent to which an individual is able to move with ease and without restriction. Depending on the type and severity of their condition, children with cerebral palsy vary in their level of difficulty with movement. 

There are also co-existing disorders in some children with cerebral palsy, such as vision issues, hearing loss, and intellectual disabilities. Similar to cerebral palsy, these coexisting conditions may be caused by brain injury or brain growth anomalies.

Babies with cerebral palsy often have a hard time crawling. A lot of the time, brain damage that comes along with cerebral palsy severely affects muscle control. This can be frustrating to the point where the baby gives up on crawling altogether. This then creates a new issue because the brain stops building and strengthening the connections involved in the development of movement and motor skills.

The Robot Crawler

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma built a motorized scooter to help at-risk children aged two to eight months to crawl. A real game-changer in the treatment of cerebral palsy, the Self-Initiated Prone Progression Crawler (SIPPC) has been designed to mitigate neurological damage caused by cerebral palsy at an early age.

A crawling frame and connected onesie helps to support the child's body while an EEG cap tracks brain activity. In addition to this, the device has mounted cameras that will take recordings 20 times a second. The most critical aspect of the device is a machine learning algorithm that analyzes the baby’s movements and anticipates what they’ll do next. The algorithm makes it so that the crawler can be a few steps ahead and adjust to meet the child’s support needs. The collected data produces a 3D graph of the child's habitual movements and their progression over time.

To prove the efficacy of their device, researchers studied 28 babies at risk for cerebral palsy as they practised crawling with the SIPPC system twice a week for twelve weeks. The group was split into those who used the full capabilities of the SIPPC and those who used the support structure without all of the high tech add-ons. The results showed that the babies who used the switched-on SIPPC could navigate a room roughly one month earlier than those in a group who practiced with just the frame. Researchers checked in with their study participants once they were 14 months old. They discovered that the babies who had used the SIPPC device to its full potential were more likely to be crawling independently.

Unfortunately, the device can’t yet be used at home as it’s still in its early stages and there’s an incredible amount of data to work through. However, the team behind the Self-Initiated Prone Progression Crawler hopes to be able to remedy that soon. 

About Stephen’s Place

Stephen’s Place is an independent apartment community for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, located in Vancouver, WA (7 minutes from Portland, OR).

If you have a loved one with developmental or intellectual disabilities who is looking for a community to live in, please contact us for more information. 

Stephen’s Place is a private-pay apartment community due to our state-of-the-art amenities and programs. We are a nonprofit and do not profit from our community. We are private pay because we spend more than some housing communities to ensure that our residents are comfortable and can safely live their lives with independence and dignity.